HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

sshah1983

138 karma · joined March 2, 2011

submissionscomments
sshah1983··on Dennis Austin, developer of PowerPoint, has died
I’ll never forget the grade 9 science class Powerpoint presentation I did in 1998. I had each letter of every headline flying in one by one with a laser sound (pew pew pew). That was my first moment of magic with Powerpoint.
sshah1983··on We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon
Agreed but I’ve yet to hear the killer tactic for how a company gets every employee 100% focused 100% of the time.

I think there are some roles that end up suffering. Like someone who is a product designer and now has to cram more creativity in fewer hours. Someone who is in inside or outside sales and has less time where they overlap with customers to perform demos and close deals. It may work - it may not work.

The penalty for being sick for a day (or your kid being sick for a day) is more drastic too. Although perhaps those folks just use their extra day to catch up.

I’m more bullish on remote work than these 4 day a week experiments.

sshah1983··on We're moving to a four-day work week at Beacon
I still don’t understand the 100% as productive in 80% of the time. The math doesn’t check out there unless the expectation is people are working 10 hr days Mon-Thurs. Even in that scenario, not everyone has the stamina to execute at that pace and it also makes it hard to recruit anyone with a kid who needs to navigate school dropoffs/pickups etc.
sshah1983··on Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads
Some feedback on your “news” page. Near the bottom there is a section that says: “Are you ready to start with Vega template?”. Probably just an artifact and an easy fix.
sshah1983··on John Deere buys autonomous tractor startup Bear Flag Robotics
Another win for the CMU mafia.
sshah1983··on Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?
Public.com - it’s fun.
sshah1983··on Alibaba slapped with record $2.7B antitrust fine
Feels like a slap on the wrist in the grand scheme of things. I expect this to be a catalyst for Alibaba’s stock since the cloud of uncertainty over how severe the CCP punishment would be has now been lifted and that’s very much been weighing the stock down the past 5-6 months.
sshah1983··on Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block
My guess is that that Plaid will go public via a SPAC deal now. I think it's highly likely GSAH (Goldman Sachs Acquisition Holdings) is that SPAC that does a deal. They have $750M to play with and given Visa was going to buy Plaid for $5.3B, the numbers kind of make sense.
sshah1983··on Ask HN: Are you preparing for a market crash? How?
Certainly would have been a dominant strategy the past couple of months.
sshah1983··on Show HN: We made a web app so that our parents can keep reading to our daughter
Caribu is an app in this space as well. Essentially video calls with sync’ed storybooks.
sshah1983··on Show HN: ScholarCheck – Programmatically verify students' emails
Do you filter out @alumni.* accounts? That was the go to way of getting student deals after graduating.
sshah1983··on Show HN: One Click Shopping Everywhere
I like the concept. A couple of thoughts:

1) I wonder how you can secure the lowest price however. I'm guessing there's no way you can slurp in all the targeted promotional offers that a user receives from a specific retailer and apply them in the checkout process.

2) Do you make judgment calls as to when it makes sense to get things cheaper vs. get them faster (i.e., best buy has something a couple bucks cheaper but Amazon will get it to me 3 days faster).

3) How are returns handled?

Cool concept but this gets hairy fast.

sshah1983··on Show HN: Bitterness – Personalized Pranks Delivered
Gotta keep a straight face :)
sshah1983··on Show HN: Bitterness – Personalized Pranks Delivered
You should have received a confirmation email. We would have sent the recipient an email asking them to setup their gift delivery (i.e., let us know the place and time they want their gift delivered). If you didn't get a confirm email, just shoot us a note at support@sweetnessapp.com and we'll take care of it.

Normal gifts will be back in play on Wednesday!

sshah1983··on Show HN: Bitterness – Personalized Pranks Delivered
Right now for 4/1, we're just doing the 3 pranks. Everything is pretty much a gift box + cookie + envelope containing the custom photoshopped eTicket/reservation.

But this is for fun. After this week, we'll get back to building Sweetness http://www.sweetnessapp.com

Nonetheless, would love to hear any ideas for how we can take this to the next level for 4/1/2016.

sshah1983··on Show HN: Bitterness – Personalized Pranks Delivered
Good catch...working on the edit!
sshah1983··on Show HN: Bitterness – Personalized Pranks Delivered
Awesome. Yea, give it a shot. Would love to hear your thoughts and learn about how your recipient reacted.

Super pumped for 4/1.

sshah1983··on Show HN: Bitterness – Personalized Pranks Delivered
A couple ways.

First, you get to record a video greeting card as part of the flow. This allows you to really sell your recipient/victim on the prank.

Second, we make sure that all the info is customized and specific to the recipient. If you order the airline ticket prank for example, we'll email you to get your frequent flyer numbers and stuff and make sure that we get the right legal names on the fake eTicket.

We tested it out on our wives last week. It...was...hilarious.

sshah1983··on Show HN: Bitterness – Personalized Pranks Delivered
Would love to hear any feedback.

We want to help folks have some fun in SF this April Fools' Day. Give it a shot - it's totally free. Happy to answer any questions as well.

sshah1983··on For business school graduates, investment banking is out and consulting is in
I don't think it's ever fair to generalize and hate on people just because they have a specific degree. Sometimes grad school is a good place to reboot your career and I'm of the belief that education is never a bad move.

There's plenty of insanely smart people I know who have an MBA and can get their hands dirty and hustle (versus the stereotype that they can just build a powerpoint on execution but can't actually deliver). It's just a matter of finding the right people.